Tools Featured in this Teardown

Introduction

Welcome to the future of watch evolution. The Pebble E-Paper Watch is the "first watch built for the 21st century." It can track your bikerides, display your text messages, and even tell the time! We had no choice but to bust the Pebble open and see what made it tick.

Update: We did not initially find hardware evidence of Bluetooth Low Energy support, but the engineers at Pebble got in touch to clarify things. Their RF module does in fact support BLE, and they assure us that a firmware update to support this feature is forthcoming.

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This teardown is not a repair guide. To repair your Pebble, use our service manual.

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While there is no exact definition for what makes a display technology e-paper, it essentially entails paper-like readability in ambient light and very low power draw. The Pebble makes use of a new Sharp Memory LCD that puts it in the realm of e-ink and e-paper.

The display is capable of maintaining its current image with very low power draw (less than 15 μW for a static image, according to the manufacturer).

Peeling up the Pebble's e-paper display film reveals backlight LEDs. The small display only requires three LEDs (controllable by a wrist gesture) to light its face.

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Just a swish and a flick of the spudger and the lone ribbon cable surrounding the whole assembly is freed.

The cable's adhesive also secures the backlight guide, allowing the LEDs to shine on, providing backlighting for the e-paper screen.

We learned in our Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight teardown that light guides work by bouncing light shined in one end through a diffraction grating to provide an even glow—in this case beneath the e-paper display.

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Removing the backlight guide panel from the device grants us access to the motherboard/battery/vibrator assembly.

Much like the ribbon cable, three components make up this assembly, held together by very delicate soldering. If any one of them fails (most significantly the battery), they will all need to be replaced as a single unit.

The Bluetooth antenna printed into the flex circuit board connects to the pan1316 BT module here.

Word on the street was that Pebble had BLE functionality just waiting to be activated with a firmware update, but we can't find evidence of the hardware to back up this hidden potential.

Update: Pebble assures us that the update will be forthcoming, and explained that TI uses the same silicon for both the CC2560 and CC2564 parts—so despite the label on the chip, the update will make this a CC2564 with BLE support.

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Smartwatches might be the next big thing, but—right now—the Pebble is a unique device. We don't have a repairability metric for a watch…yet.

In lieu of a numeric score, we'd like to list a few of our repairability and durability findings:

Low power consumption decreases the frequency of charges, increasing the battery life.

Watch band is a standard size and easily replaceable.

Inaccessible battery limits life of the device to 6-10 years (by our estimates).

It is impossible to open the device without destroying it or at least compromising its waterproofing, making internal repairs infeasible.

We got in touch with Pebble's design team and voiced some concerns about end-of-life recycling. We were happy to learn that they currently have a plan in the works for a responsible recycling program for dead Pebbles.

I got a replacement Pebble due to screen problems, and the device that's arrived (May 2014) says in the "About" section that it's "Hardware V3R2" and what's more it has 4 torx screws on the back, that the original did not have. Has anyone tried to take this model apart (I'm not going to as it's my only working one)?

The pic of the board connecting to the battery in Step 13 has a glaring unused section of board shown in the lower left. This is not common board layout practices. My guess is that an IC was removed from their DVT units before this PVT shipped and they didn't bother to re-route. My guess is that it was either a wireless chip or additional sensor that did not work out with the DVT step.